In my experience, most of the existing options for OpenPGP/GPG/PGP are archaic and do not work well with how people use computers today. I think that we can create a simple experience with tight integration in the browser that can make encryption much more accessible.

The project is in very early stages right now, and the current version is definitely an alpha. However, I wanted to put a version out there. Please note that this is still being developed and may not yet be suitable for your super secret needs, as noted in the license there is NO WARRANTY of any sort associated with this software.

Install/Use

Click here to add the extension to chrome. It will ask you for permissions.

Open the Options page for the extension

You currently need to provide your own OpenPGP/PGP/GPG key. I hope to include key creation in a later version. Paste your private key into the box on the “my keys” options page. (You need to paste an armored version of your key. If you’re running linux try “man gpg” for more info)

Add keys for your friends (or your own public key) in the “friends keys” section of the options page.

Go to your gmail inbox. Compose an email to someone who’s key you’ve added. Click on the “encrypt me” in the upper right. *Note there is currently an issue where sometimes this will not display, try refreshing the page if this is the case.

If you receive an encrypted message, click on the “decrypt me” in the upper right of the page.

Developer Details

jsOpenPGP

I’ve decided to dub the JavaScript OpenPGP library for this project jsOpenPGP. It aims to be an independent library that can be used in other projects as the library to provide OpenPGP encryption. Currently it supports RSA/AES/SHA/CAST5 encryption/decryption. It does not yet do message signing or key creation.

By combining the work by Herbert Hanewinkel and Tom Wu, we are able to create a powerful library. Both of these libraries had to be modified to work together, and the OpenPGP code was mostly re-written to provide a more object oriented approach and some code simplifying that I believe will make the project easier to build on.

Architecture

The project takes advantage of the “walled garden” approach to extensions. Through the use of a content script, there are changes made on the gmail page, which also interacts with a background page that serves as the middleman between the extension backend and the gmail front end. This is necessary because we want to store key information in the context of the extension, and this allows a certain level of protection between the gmail page and the key details in the extension. Google provides a good overview of this architecture.

Related Works

GPGTools is working on using a JavaScript implementation of OpenPGP for a mobile app.

Thinkst has released an extension that performs a very similar feature. However, rather than using a Javascript implementation, it uses a user-installed GPG binary on the local filesystem.

FireGPG used to be very similar. It runs only in FireFox. It has stopped supporting Gmail

Todo

There is a lot of work still to do. Things I’d like to accomplish include: Key creation, key signing, find a good draft uploading solution, further integration with the browser, bugfixes. Check out the latest source for most recent details.

I would love help, head on over to the project page if you can help out!

If it’s asking for a password, it is detecting that there is a password associated with your private key. If you haven’t set a password for your private key, then it would appear to be an issue with the software. Please let me know if there is no password on your private key. There is going to be a new version coming out shortly with a different pgp backend, so if you are still having issues that can hopefully resolve them for you.

thanks a lot for this nice application! I have a small question… If I encrypt and decrypt a message, the new lines are lost…ie. a message such as
“Hello
How are you?”
looks like “HelloHow are you?”
Do you know why is this happening?
Thanks again!

Thanks for the feedback. You were absolutely right that when encrypting Mymail-Crypt for Gmail would generally neglect the new lines. This has been updated, and I have pushed this change to both the Chrome Web store and github. Please let me know if you are still having an issue with this.

Just FYI: please make sure that if you’re looking for updates you look at prometheusx.net rather than this single post, as I do not plan on updating this post.

Years ago I built a cmd script (batch file) for use by myself and a few friends. IT GREATLY SIMPLIFIES the use of pgp 2.6.3i for emails and attachments. In essence, I’ve eliminated the ‘command line’ work and substituted a Drag-And-Drop system for both encryption and decryption. As far as I know, it works with ANY VERSION of Windows. Anybody there wanna talk about it?

It’s great that you’re interested in the project. The project aims to use/be exclusively Open Source Software and run entirely within a browser (via Javascript), so I don’t think we plan on having a direct integration with PGP. However, if you’re interested in helping out in the project please head to the github page for the encryption side of the software.